Mornie Alantie
by Princess Tyler Briefs
Summary: What ever happened to happily ever after? This story isn't the answer to that question. What might have happened if Saruman had tried to take over the shire just alittle earlier. Say...a week or so after Frodo left?
1. When darkness falls

A/N: this is an AU story, but I hope that doesn't disway you because I plan on making this very well written. This story is dedicated to my best friend Halogatomon. She's an awesome person, I hope you all have the chance to get to know her and become her friend. If not, please be sure to at least read her many fantastic stories. THANKIES HALO-CHAN FOR ALL YOU DO ^_^!  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own LotR and never will. Sorry.  
  
Mornie Alantie  
By: PTB  
  
It wasn't supposed to happen like this, Frodo could tell. After all their hard work to destroy the ring, Saruman wasn't supposed to be in complete control of the Shire when they got home. The hobbits weren't supposed to be slaves to men in their own homeland, and they certainly weren't supposed to kill people. Beside him in the cell, Merry shivered.  
"It's cold." Merry stated the fact in full obviousness and honesty and rubbed his bare arms to warm them. It was true, the hobbits were only allowed one set of clothes and those were for summer. It was now winter and very, very drafty. Pippin coughed beside him, and Merry looked at him in worry and exchanged a look with Frodo. The young hobbit hadn't been doing well since they'd gotten back, and being exposed to conditions like this was not helping. Sam shifted his weight on the small bored beside Frodo.   
"I don't like this Mister Frodo."  
"Neither do I Sam." Pippin coughed again and pulled his knees up to his chest with a whimpering sound. He looked around with lackluster gray blue eyes at all the hobbits sitting together in small clusters, trying their hardest to stay warm by huddling up together.  
"They shouldn't be so thin." Pippin whispered to himself. Merry perked up and looked at him.  
"You say something Pip?"  
"They shouldn't be so thin. Only hobbits like Frodo and me are supposed to be that thin. And the children shouldn't be die'n." Merry's eyes softened and he put an arm around the younger hobbits shoulders.  
"I know Pippin, I know." He gave the thin shoulders a slight squeeze, noting how tense and slight they felt in his hands.  
"We should tell Aragorn, Legolas, or somebody." Pippin whispered, one small tear falling from his eyes and smearing the dirt on his too pale cheeks.   
"We will Pip, I promise, as soon as we figure out how." Pippin nodded gloomily, and laid his head on Merry's shoulder, breathing deeply and coughing every once in a while. Merry sent Frodo and Sam a pleading look, and it was obvious he sensed what the other two had long ago. If they didn't do something soon the youngest in their rank wouldn't last much longer.   
"I'm tired Merry." Pippin whispered, shivering, his accent extra prominent with his exhaustion. Merry whipped the dark curly locks back and gently kissed the smooth, warm, forehead held in his hands.  
"Then go to sleep Pip, and dream of better things." Pippin nodded and soon fell into the happy oblivion of sleep, unaware of his cousin's growing concerns for him, Frodo's anxieties about everything, and Sam's determination to do something before it was to late. He could not, however, dream of better things. His mind could only go back and replay their homecoming and how they had become like this...  
  
"Home, home, we're going home!" Merry laughed along with Pippin's high spirits and Frodo shook his head in amusement. He did have to agree though; it felt so good to be going home. After all the places they'd all been and seen, coming back to the Shire sounded like going to heaven. The four of them rounded a corner and came to a gate.  
"Hullo, what's this?" Sam asked while Merry held up his lantern to see better. The light fell across a sign hanging on a peg nailed into the heavy planks.  
"'You have entered Sharkie's domain, keep out!' Sharkie's domain? But this is Shire land!" Pippin looked back at the others in confusion and only got mirrored glances. Merry kept looking upward, trying to get his lantern light to the top of the gate. Even when he had it held high as he could you could only faintly make out the sharp tipped edges of the planks.  
"There's wire at the top, with pointed ends." Merry noticed, "Almost like tangles of a rose bush. No one would be daft enough to try and get over that nasty looking stuff."  
"Yes but is it meant to keep people out or keep hobbits in?" Frodo whispered to himself. Sam was about to state his thoughts one the matter, when the gate creaked open.   
"Who goes there?" The voice was venomous, and Sam shuddered. That was not a hobbits voice.   
"We're travelers, who have seen many a distant land, and are now returning home. And you, sir, are on my land so either go tell the Master of Brandyhall that his son Meriadoc has returned or move so I may do it myself." Something of a face (consisting mostly of two dangerous looking eyes, an overly large crooked nose, and pointy canines)  
leered at them from the darkness.   
"You won't be getting any messages there young hobbit. Your precious Brandyhall has been destroyed and the Master killed." Merry cried out and drew his sword at the same time, but the man (or whatever he was) was faster. He reached out and grabbed the nearest hobbit by his neck. This happened to be Pippin, who was to shocked to really put up much of a fight.   
"One step closer and he dies!" Merry froze midstep, while Sam and Frodo halted their ponies. "You all come with me or we'll do this to the lot of yah an' worse to him!" He picked Pippin up and threw him, none to gently, at a metal post some feet away. Even through the tough armor of Gondor, Pippin heard some very distinct cracks from the area of his rib cage and let out a whimper of intense pain.   
"Pippin!" Merry cried and, unable to restrain himself any longer, made a dash for his beloved little cousin. Again the man revealed lightning reflexes, picking the small stunned hobbit up again and slamming his face into the afor said pole. Pippin felt warm liquid slide down his face, and heard Sam and Frodo's cries as if he were listening through water and was a fair distance off.  
"Now no more of that or there'll be none of him left to save." The man dropped the not quite conscious Pippin a good two feet in front of Merry, who was looking very subdued. Then, just for good measure, a bored fell on the back of Merry's head with a crack. "An' no up starting." Merry crashed to his knees, hands clutching the back of his head, eyes sqooze painfully shut. The man sneered at him, then yelled into the darkness.   
"All right! Get 'em boys!" Several large men appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and seized the four hurt and/or startled hobbits by the scruffs of the necks.   
"Take 'em to camp eighteen, and make sure they see all the stops along the way." Villainous laughter from the men holding them, and then the hobbits found themselves being dragged away. Frodo and Sam looked worriedly at each other as Merry and Pippin flopped along like rag dolls, both barely conscious. 


	2. Far you are from Home

A/N: Once again this chapter gives a little more background, setting everything up. But after this there shouldn't be more of it. Just something that had to be understood for later events to make sense (yes, I actually do have this story more or less planned out). Once again this story is dedicated to my very best friend Halo.  
  
Warnings: Um this is rated PG-13 for some themes, maybe some language later on and (don't tell this to my sister) some slightly somewhat slashy undertones between Merry and Pip. *hides* Halo you've corrupted me!  
  
Mornie Alantie  
By: PTB  
  
Pippin awoke that morning much the same as the day after they'd arrived, early and quietly. He groaned softly at the flaring pain in his chest as he stretched his arms. Softly he looked up at Merry who'd fallen asleep on Frodo, with his arm protectively around Pippin. Whatever conversation they'd had after he'd fallen asleep must have upset Merry badly to make him told him like that.  
With still sleepy eyes the tweenager looked up at the face of his older, still sleeping cousin. Tear streaks were on the now peaceful face, exposing a little skin under the dirt and grime they'd managed to take with them, and Pippin felt a twinge of guilt.  
It was his fault Merry had been crying. Since they had been small hobbit lads, he and Merry had often shared the same dream. As they had gotten older, and their friendship increased, they shared dreams almost every night and thought little of it now. And he had been dreaming of that night, almost a month ago, which meant Merry had relieved it all too.  
Pippin shuddered, remembering Merry's reaction as they'd awoken from near unconsciousness near Brandyhall. All of Buckland had been burnt and destroyed. It was a land of desolation as far as any of the hobbits could see until across the Brandywine, were the Shire looked much the same as ever.   
Frodo had looked downcast, he'd spent much of his younger years in Buckland, and Pippin and Sam had felt sorry that any part of the Shire could resemble Isengard and Mordor so closely.   
But for Merry, this was home, the place he'd grown up in and the land he'd fought so many evils to protect. Yet here it was in absolute ruin. It was all gone, turned into thick black ashes that were whipped away by the wind. Even the Brandywine was a thick muddy red torrent.  
It was the first time Pippin ever saw Meriadoc the Magnificent really and truly cry before, and it most certainly wasn't to be the last. Everyone cried in this god-forsaken place. He'd watched in sympathetic horror, being unable to go over and offer any more comfort, as Merry had leaned over and been violently sick, choking and sobbing with tears falling from his eyes. He didn't resemble a knight of Rohan much now, but Pippin knew he couldn't help it and that at the moment he really didn't care. His home was utterly destroyed, and it was safe now to say the gatekeeper was right about his father's death.   
But the worst was yet to come. The gorilla like men, who shamed Aragorn by saying they were the same species as him and the valiant people of Gondor, dragged a sobbing and sometimes heaving Merry and the other hobbits the remainder of the way to 'camp number 18'.  
This turned out to be Brandyhall, but not as the four of them had known it. The great halls and places Merry and Frodo had played in as children were destroyed, the stately rooms turned to cells. In essence Merry's home was now a prison.   
They were dragged down the main hall and thrown into a cell that, ironically enough, had once been Merry's room. As the door slammed shut behind them, Merry fell to his knees. The few hobbits all ready in the room looked at them as if trying to place them with a family. Pippin knelt down by Merry, who had now fallen onto his hands and knees, and whose shoulders were shaking with repressed sobs.   
"You can cry Merry. We won't think less of you." A great sob escaped Merry's throat and he was soon struggling for breath. Pippin gave him a sympathetic look, as Frodo got onto his knees and rubbed Merry's back in a soothing motion much as he'd done when they were kids. Suddenly, someone at the back of the cell jumped to their feet.  
"Master Peregrin!" Pippin looked up, startled. He had to squint hard to see them in the dim light but he recognized them quickly.  
"Ringo!" Pippin jumped to his feet and ran over, giving his friend a hug.   
"Praise the Valar Pip, everyone said you were dead! My word you've grown!"  
"No, no, I didn't die. I went to far away lands but I am back now." Ringo hugged him again, and then stood back with sad eyes.  
"So much has changed since you left Peregrin. So much has changed." Pippin returned his sober look.  
"Ringo what happened here, to Brandyhall?" Pippin's voice was barley above a whisper, and he motioned Sam closer so he could hear too.   
"It all started barely a week after you'd left. Men came, and besieged everything this side of the Brandywine. They burned it all, and killed anyone they felt like. That was all of them, save a handful of the best Brandybucks, including Master Saradoc. We would have come to help but it was to far, and all over by the time anyone west of the East Farthing heard." Pippin's eyes were wide, and Sam was praying Merry wasn't hearing this.  
"And what happened to the other Brandybucks, the ones who lived?"  
"I wouldn't rightly call this existence living Master Peregrin. An' you know Brandybucks they won't take none lying down. They tried to fight an' escape loads of times but...none did. Master Saradoc was last left alive. He tried to escape long with...some others...They hanged up in Bywater. That was the last Brandybuck, 'cept Master Merry now." Merry had heard all of this, and was now violently trembling in Frodo's grasp with wide disbelieving eyes. Frodo wanted to beg Pippin to stop but he, like the other two, had noticed Ringo's hesitation at naming the others who had been hanged.   
"Who were the others Ringo, that were martyred that day?"  
"I..."  
"Ringo I must know! Who were they?"  
"They...they...oh Pip! It were your da' and Gaffer Gamgee!" Sam stiffened, his breath caught in his throat. Pippin choked.   
"What?"  
"They hanged up for the whole Shire ta see what happens to upstarts. An' they're last words I'll never forget, s'long as I live Master Peregrin. 'Our sons live on and will be the saviors of the Shire!'" Poor Ringo looked at the floor, tears welling up in his eyes. "'M sorry Master Peregrin, to 'ave to be the one to tell ye." Pippin crashed to his knees and could only stare in utter disbelief.  
  
Sorry for the cliffhanger. I'll do more tomorrow, I promise! 


End file.
